Wi-Fi in a forest with Ubiquiti Unifi

I used a Ubiquiti Unifi Building-to-Building Bridge and various access points to get my home network deep into our backyard forest.
Unifi equipment list:
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[@kevinalexander92]

What a nice set up! I really like how it is working seamlessly!

[@BruceWinter]

Thanks!

[@glasshousemtns]

I’m so looking forward to creating similar to you in my conservation forest, thanks for sharing that it’s all now possible to monitor wildlife in livestreams.

[@TECHiHOBBYIST]

Ahh wow loved this

[@aaaideas4U]

Brilliant!!! ❤

[@guitardreams70]

Beautiful property. Love that area of Alabama.

[@BruceWinter]

Thanks! I'm amazed at the bio-diversity here. I've identified over 200 different plants/trees in just our 2 acre lot!

[@69DUDLEY]

Nice plan

[@saviom8166]

Very neat!

[@mortenmoulder]

I've never seen a house of that size with that many switches :D Running Ubiquiti APs is the best route to go, I think. I solely run Ubiquiti at home as well

[@BruceWinter]

Ubiquiti is an interesting company. Founded by a young ex-apple engineer 20 years ago. He is now worth $16 billion!

[@user-yo4qf1de1b]

This is a perfect environment to live 😮

[@ELGee1]

Nice setup. When i AM retired i would love to do the same things

[@BruceWinter]

Thanks! The great thing about tech projects, seems there is always something new to play with.

[@ELGee1]

@@BruceWinter want to do IT right how. Haha but live gets in the way

[@cdoublejj]

that is one hell of an interesting home outdoor network. i'm getting off grid vibes. so many thoughts and comments and ideas. for everything i can nitpick there are also pros as well. defintley gives a guy some ideas as well

[@BruceWinter]

Would love to have an off-grid option, but Alabama and trees are not very friendly to solar panels.

[@user-fx2sf8pr5l]

Awesome!

[@vwestTube]

Nice 👍🏼

[@JohnjrtChicago]

I Miss your videos, care sent from NC

[@RiviAlbani]

Nice Video.. 👏

[@DesertGardenPrepper]

a presence detection method I wasn't aware of. pretty dang cool.

[@BruceWinter]

Ironically, Goggle, the system I just moved away from, just released something even more clever, an app called WifiRttLocator App that uses Wi-Fi Round Trip Time (RTT) lets your device measure its distance to RTT-capable Wi-Fi access points, like google wifi. Might have to plug those back in just to test it.

[@ryoohk]

For the PtP I use AirMax Nano stations, now you cant control them with the UniFi controller but once you set them up there up and they cost way less and preform just as well. Also for your forest switches you might want to look in to the Flex Switch and the Flex utility.

[@BruceWinter]

Thanks for the tips! So many UniFi devices, hard to know what is out there :)

[@thumperhunts6250]

have you worked on the vortex implosion energy at all?

[@SolarizeYourLife]

Poison ivy is loving the download speeds...

[@drewpair7148]

I wish I had this setup

[@supremeicecreme1658]

That's a pretty interesting Unifi setup there! My only criticism - network hubs do exist (and shouldn't really be used over switches), and the devices you were calling hubs are actually switches.

[@BruceWinter]

Yeah, sorry, my bad. Are hubs better only because they are cheaper, or do they have other advantages?

[@supremeicecreme1658]

@@BruceWinter I think that's about it. Think of hubs like soldering the cores of the Ethernet cables together - all the data gets sent to all the devices. Switches, on the other hand, are more intelligent where they associate each physical connection on a port to the MAC address of the device that's connected, so packets destined for a certain device get sent to that device, and none of the others.

[@maximevelhinhodearaujo3625]

God damn, amazing !

[@Sam-qg1dy]

if the animals get on social media, this guy has them covered!

[@Dagreenberg68]

The animals are on social media!

[@Rhidayah]

Animal patch update coming soon

[@ChaJ67]

I had a few questions about this setup: 1. For the 60 GHz bridge with 5 GHz backup, do you have any stats on how much goes over at 60 GHz verses 5 GHz? I have been reluctant over the idea of using 60 GHz around any vegetation over concerns such a high frequency would bounce off the leaves and branches as it is just below the infrared light range in frequency and was thinking the much cheaper WiFi only bridge would make more sense. However, from your video, it looks like you should have this data where I am more hypothesizing what would happen. (For another way to think about it, microwave ovens use 2.45 GHz as the food absorbs the signal and as the signal absorbs, it gets weaker, which is why it tends to be cold in the middle of a large food item being warmed while hot around the edges. 60 GHz is going to absorb and even bounce off / scatter a lot more than 2.45 GHz, which is very close to 2.4 GHz WiFi and about half the frequency of 5.8 GHz WiFi.) 2. For the long range Unifi AP, why did you mount horizontal instead of vertical? The radiation coming out of the long range APs is intentionally uneven depending on orientation, so was wondering if there was a specific reason for the orientation you chose. 3. With all of this other Unifi hardware, was curious as to why Unifi switches weren't used? Was also wondering how exactly that affects your tree view of the network in the Unifi controller? I am thinking it probably flattens it out as the Unifi controller can no longer tell where exactly something is plugged in, right? (As a network scales up in size, especially towards the upper bound of what you would use Unifi for, being able to see exactly where everything is plugged in from the software can be very handy.)

[@BruceWinter]

1: 5 ghz usage is about 1% of the 60Ghz usage, about 100 GB per 24 hours, mostly from the 9 4k video cameras. You are probably right about 60 Ghz not doing well if there is vegetation in the way. I have only a few leaves in the way and can see one access point from the other. 2: For the in house AP, I get the best coverage mounted horizontal on the ceiling, as advised by Ubiquity. They have other APs designed for vertical wall mounts 3: I would have used Unifi switches if I had known about them. I may upgrade to them eventually for the advantages you mention.

[@jameswoll]

You're such a freakin' boss.

[@BruceWinter]

Thanks!

[@BruceWinter]

Yeah, metal conduit would most certainly defeated the wire chewing critters, and probably cost less, but I didn't have the ambition for that.

[@jrmbtr]

Do you have specifics on the presence detection you mention with phones reconnecting to various APs?

[@BruceWinter]

Sure, this is the node-red code, which gets the ap_mac state from the HomeAssistant Unifi integration: ap_mac = msg.data.new_state.attributes.ap_mac loc = 'unknown' if (ap_mac == 'xxx1') { loc = 'home'} if (ap_mac == 'xxx2') { loc = 'on the trail'} if (ap_mac == 'xxx3') { loc = 'at the gazebo'} if (ap_mac == 'xxx3') { loc = 'in the front yard'} if (ap_mac == 'xxx4') { loc = 'in the back yard'} msg.payload = 'Bruce is ' + loc

[@RogerDiotte]

Wired for Sound!

[@ADKAdmin]

EnGenius has a WiFi bridge that is about half that cost and just as powerful. I just installed one last week. It’s their ENH500v3 Kit. Also has a claimed range of 5 miles max.

[@BruceWinter]

Impressive, less than 1/2, $200, and up to 5 miles! Probably slower though, as it is 5 ghz, -vs- 60 ghz on the Unifi bridge.

[@nightbladexxx]

I've used both EnGenius and Ubiquiti's bridges. The UniFi bridge is tons easier to setup and maintain.

[@John-ho7zl]

I wish you would have posted a list of all the equipment you used

[@BruceWinter]

Yeah, sorry, should have done that. I just added it to the video description.

[@zainiot]

crazy rich AP

[@acasey4014]

How many switch hops do you have between your most distant device and you internet source? Why didn't you use the power injectors instead POE switches where possible? Too many switch to switch hops will slow or stop your network traffic.

[@BruceWinter]

Hmmm, I didn't think of that. Yeah, the furthest camera would go through 5 switches. It doesn't seem to suffer, seems as reliable as those that go through just one.

[@michael5434]

Is this a WISP? Do you resell internet and what signal are you using?

[@BruceWinter]

I had to look WISP wifi up. No, this is simply me getting my house wifi into our backyard.

[@YeleSam]

Hi Bruce! Looking forward to more content. Its been a while.

[@BruceWinter]

Yeah, it has been over a year now! I hope to get back into doing videos in a month or two. Thanks for the ping :)

[@antoineozaneaux6881]

wildlife or lack there off must LOVE this , city folks stuff .

[@StevenBritton]

Happy NY, Bruce. I'm curious to know what sort of tinkering you've been up to. Hope all is well.

[@BruceWinter]

Hey Steven. I do have a couple of new projects in the works, plan on re-starting monthly videos in a month or two.

[@jeanfrancois4157]

Hi Bruce, Ubiquiti monitoring system with the UDP-PRO is fantastic. Also I am impressed by the 24 HR usage of your google home speakers (400 to 500 MB) !! Are you chating a lot with google or aren't it a little bit intrusive in your house ? Have you mesured the energy used by all your network devices that are always on and identify those who can be shutdown on demand or scheduled ? Are you thinking in using smart plugs to save energy by scheduling the start/stop of remote devices or to control them on demand by using your google home speaker ?

[@BruceWinter]

I had not noticed the 400 MB 24 hour usage on the google home speakers before. Must be the traffic from it constantly listening for commands, will have to look into that more. My overnight baseline (lights, computer, HVAC, etc off) for energy usage is now almost 400 watts, was 200 watts 4 years ago. I could save 100 watts by turning the cameras off at night, but I like to watch for night critters on the trails.

[@NamdhariInfotech]

wow amazing network how much internet speed coming?

[@BruceWinter]

We have your average cable internet, about 80/4 Mbs.

[@clayc9221]

Step 1. Acquire home with deep forest

[@rabihnaser7945]

In your case you don't need the 60ghz not suitable within trees. You could save lots of money buy using mikrotik sxt 5ghz. I'm interested in knowing what results are you getting, check your link is it connected on 60ghz or 5 GHz the redundant frequency (built in backup frequency auto switching)

[@BruceWinter]

Yeah, overkill for sure. I have since seen much cheaper 5ghz radios that would have worked just fine. Here is a snapshot of the 'Air Stats': 5 GHz Channel Auto38 VHT80 Transmit Power 25 dBm / 35 dBm (EIRP) Tx Pkts/Bytes 297,934 / 266 MB Rx Pkts/Bytes 939,611,412 / 853 GB 60 GHz Channel 2 HT1080 Transmit Power 18 dBm / 35 dBm (EIRP) Tx Pkts/Bytes 634,350,628 / 47.1 GB Rx Pkts/Bytes 317,571 / 264 MB

[@shrirangkahale]

How do you get internet there?

[@BruceWinter]

Home internet router -> Unifi dream machine router -> Unifi building-to-building bridge -> various wifi access points

[@shrirangkahale]

@@BruceWinter I mean what type of internet? DSL ? Fiber?

[@BruceWinter]

@@shrirangkahale Standard cable internet. The forested nature of our lot makes us look remote, but we actually in a Birmingham AL suburb.

[@ocdtechtalk]

Very nice. Curious why you're not using CMX rated wire?

[@BruceWinter]

I did get an 'outdoor' rated cable the 2nd time round, not sure if it was CMX rated. It failed also, not sure why. That cable was a pain to string/bury, so I got lazy and went wireless.

[@MitchOfCanada]

get soem VLANS and get smart devices on their own network, same with phones, security etc. firewall rule the hell outta them

[@TheRebelmanone]

The only thing i don't like about smart devices knowing everything is if it gets hacked then now not only does your software system know everything, so does the criminal. Knows when you're home, when you're not, where you are in your home when you are home, etc... the more it knows the more they will know.

[@vlycop7404]

i don't know the climate over there, but isn't the humidity bad for all that tech stuff under the treehouse roof ? I had issue with a switch in my badly isolated garages shorting, so i'm guessing open air is worst ? Thank you for those video, i am patiently waiting for them every month :)

[@BruceWinter]

Yeah, it does get hot and humid here Jun -> Aug, but all the non-waterproof stuff is protected from the rain and has held up so far.

[@vlycop7404]

@@BruceWinter Hi Bruce, It's been a couple month since your last upload when you are usually pretty timely about them. I am not asking for more video at all, but with how hard this time can be on anyone, I am just checking that everything and everyone is AOK given the circumstance. I hope this isn't a bad sign but being the only place i follow you, i am a bit worry about you ;) Have the best Xmas you can ;)

[@BruceWinter]

@@vlycop7404 Very observant of you. I've missed my monthly video goal recently, but hope to pick it back up in a few months. Thanks for your concern and hope you have nice holidays as well.

[@vlycop7404]

@@BruceWinter i am glad if you are ok :) don't bother that much about the video if those are a chore to do right now, it's ok. lot's of people need time to focus on themself and there family

[@rileysalm3108]

his shirt is inside out

[@midnightwatchman1]

you seem quite prepared to get your hands dirty. I would not have gone for the wireless bridge. I would have run metal conduit with an ethernet cable or fiber to the other side. I know your said 200 feet but there are cable solutions available for that run with the added benefit of providing PoE. although you seem to have power on the remote sides already. which would cost much less but just more physical work. the setup seems alright except for the ubiquity dream machine Pro. that dream machine pro is mostly a waste of money, just buy a small 8 or 24 port unifi switch with PoE and get a PFsense firewall/router would have given you the same and better functionality, and your seem to be a man with ordinary needs who want to maximize his investment.

[@Matt-cl4mp]

I would have put all your networking equipment in an outdoor rated nema box and mounted in on a wall. The way you have it will just get condensation and water in it eventually and will ruin your shit

[@blue8code]

Mesh mesh mesh mesh mesh every corner

[@Railfan_PC]

Very Nice, but I must put this out there. Never ever put your public WAN IP address on the internet, especially from the UniFi Controller (UDM) That is a good way for someone to target you and create problems for you and your network. Whenever you show the UniFi Controller to the public you should always blur any sensitive information like that. Showing all of your devices IP addresses isn't the best idea either, but will only help someone if they get though your system. Just be careful and stay educated. Another thing to be aware of, there are lower cost Ubiquity devices for your Point to point system you have set up (building to building) they are older in manufacturing, but are much cheaper than the $500+ in those Base stations. Nano stations do the same thing at a fraction of the cost. They are just a bit older and are no longer carried by Ubiquity (as far as I know) they are readily available on amazon. Loco m5 Nano station. I very much enjoy your setup and find it very unique due to it being in the forest. It is a very cool setup and I look forward to seeing more of it in the future. - Best Wishes, Parker C. p.s. I will be subscribing for more!

[@BruceWinter]

Thanks Parker, good points. I just updated the video using youtube's blur editor to block out the IP addresses. I wish I knew about those Nano stations, would have saved many $$s!

[@fritzfahrmann4730]

this are local IP addresses .... they could be found my an easy scan and are irrelevant from the outside ... just basic networking things

[@noretaagussasono9129]

Rocky Gerung's house .. 🤣

[@BruceWinter]

I looked up Rocky Gerung. House on a cliff in a forest, similar! Not for everybody, but we love ours.

[@noretaagussasono9129]

@@BruceWinter So calming when it's raining, right ??

[@BruceWinter]

@@noretaagussasono9129 Yes! Unless it rains a lot, then the backyard creek turns into a torrent, which is fun in a different kind of way :)

[@lazypandamonium3359]

Its a very nice setup but really Recommend to cover the IP addresses i know there only access points but still people can hack it.

[@TonnyCassidy]

its LAN ip... not public ip

[@brunodugorepec7193]

you meant to say switch not hub

[@BruceWinter]

Yep, quite right.

[@Charles.K.Barcza]

Tell me the truth, do you have a nuclear reactor in your forest to power supply so many devices? :) Maybe short distance is a better solution a Cat-cable instead of wifi.. power and money saving:) Thanks for the video

[@BruceWinter]

:) I am constantly debating the value of 9 live camera feeds -vs- electricity used, roughly 100 watts once you tally in the hubs etc. So very roughly $100/year, $10/month. I try to make up for with a high efficiency heat pump and by by running our heat pump smarter/less in cold/hot weather. 6 of the 9 cameras are Cat5 POE cameras.

[@Charles.K.Barcza]

@@BruceWinter My electricity costs around $100/month at my home, with 7 cameras and with a other few things, without forest:) (The electricity is very cheap in your country?) My cctv system unstable and lagging on wifi, therefore I put 1-1 router to endpoints, and wifi only works from endpoints

[@BruceWinter]

@@Charles.K.Barcza I have $100->$300 per month bills, rate is about $0.1 per kwh.

[@kae9797]

I just love how people live in the woods but they want wifi , internet and hey what the heck electricity too. just wait till the critters chew on the stuff or a good storm comes along and knocks down the trees. I see this stuff all the time working at the phone company, the best part is when they start crying "why does this happen" after a storm

[@MrHollow]

Jesus this is INSANE. Couldn't you just burry the cable instead of using those 2 500$ unifi 60ghz access points ?

[@BruceWinter]

Yeah, $500 was pretty crazy. But I was frustrated by stringing cables multiple times, a lot of work. And I did bury them where I could.

[@user-yo4qf1de1b]

Just get starlink satellite Internet

[@tylermcnally8232]

So what?

[@dotnetdevni]

If u live their get off the net live off grid why would anyone want this with a place like this

[@imperialdoggo5826]

Ok, you do that in your place. This is not your place however so let them live how they want wth what they want.

[@CaptainSushiii]

Why? whats the point of doing this? and if you do this, do something about the cable management and dont store it in some useless boxes. your boxes are not even watertight. Big mess. And use POE switches outside if you still wish to destroy your equipment instead of so many powercables unprotected.